This invention relates to a process and apparatus for separating and concentrating heavy minerals such as gold, silver, platinum, etc., and gemstones such as diamonds, rubys, sapphires, etc., occurring in a free state from their associated ores or other common materials. These valuable minerals may be present in small volumes randomly occurring in nature or finely dispersed in concentrates resulting from other mining processes such as dredging, drywashing, sluicing, trommeling, etc., which here-to-fore had little, if any, commercial value because of the large recovery cost in either manpower or equipment time, and hence were abendoned. A particular field in in which this problem of final, fine mineral recovery occurs is in recreational prospecting or mining.
Various types of apparatus have in the past been employed to recover precious metals, minerals, and gemstones from natural or concentrated materials using water techniques. One of the oldest types of equipment used has been the gold or diamond sluice. Heavy particles such as gold, diamonds, etc., sink to the grooved or baffled bottom of an inclined trough or flume filled with flowing water. As the heavier material concentrated from the sluice box or other ore concentrating devices, it still had to be further refined or reduced into a practical amount of final concentrate which would have a high percentage of valuable minerals.
The basic problem with existing devices is that they are not efficient in the final recovery of low grade ore concentrates. This inefficiency takes the form of either high commercial processing costs, high cost of recovery equipment, or excessive and tedious time for recovery, even for the "hobbyiest" who may consider is time as free.
Furthermore, the amount of energy or water required for final recovery is excessive.
Furthermore, expensive mercury amalgamation, followed by the dangerous use of Nitric Acid and the poisonous fumes from mercury retorting, is typically used following the implementation of existing devices in gold recovery.
Consequently, the prior art devices were limited in overall efficiency and/or high cost, thus large amounts of low grade ore concentrates remain unprocessed, have been discarded, and here-to-fore could not be further economically refined with available apparatus.
It is, therefore, the object of this invention to provide a novel process and apparatus which is adapted to efficiently separate small amounts of heavy minerals from both natural occurring concentrates and low grade ore concentrates from other mining apparatus, including the heavy and difficult concentrate made up of iron ores such as hematite, ilmenite, magnetite, etc., commonly known as "black sand".
It is also an object of the invention to provide a small, light-weight portable device.
It is also an object of the invention to provide a device that is economical to manufacture and market.
It is a further object of the invention to provide an efficient means of minimizing the amount of water and energy required to final process or concentrate the ore.
Other objects of this invention will become apparent from the description and two (2) drawings to follow, which show a perspective view of this invention from the front end and a cross-section view of the water and material path.